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Irish Times
18-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
‘It's all over': The fight to revive Europe's shrinking rural areas
Nicolás de la Fuente, a 92-year-old walking his dog on the desolate streets of Molezuelas de la Carballeda, remembers the Spanish village's heyday as a flourishing farming community. 'We had everything,' he recalls. 'There were five herds of 500 sheep each. There were two herds of 600 goats. There were cows, 200 or 300. And horses and chickens.' But the era of pastoral abundance is long gone. Commercial activity has virtually disappeared. This remote village of stone walls and unlocked doors has become an economic desert. The average age of its 47 residents has climbed to 70, making it the oldest municipality in Zamora, a northwestern province at the heart of the so-called 'emptied Spain' or España vaciada . 'Now there's nothing,' says de la Fuente. 'It's all over.' Rural depopulation has long been an issue in parts of southern and eastern Europe. But the trend is becoming an existential threat for many places and it is spreading across the continent, leaving no country unaffected. While rural areas that are well connected to towns and cities are doing better – particularly after the pandemic, which triggered a desire for more green space – the most remote areas are struggling. In the decade to 2024, the estimated number of people living in predominantly rural EU regions fell by nearly 8 million, an 8.3 per cent drop, while the urban population rose by over 10 million, or 6 per cent. Regions making up about 40 per cent of the EU's land area and containing almost one-third of its population are experiencing a sustained drop in residents. READ MORE Abandoned houses in the Spanish village of Burbaguena, near Teruel. Photo by Josep Lago/ AFP Dwindling numbers mean shops and bars are forced to close, buses run less frequently, doctors are harder to find, and classrooms become emptier. This fuels further departures, in what the OECD describes as a vicious cycle. 'Citizens should be equal, but those in rural areas are paying the price with poorer services, higher costs and fewer opportunities,' says Raffaella Mariani, the mayor of a municipality in Garfagnana, an area of Tuscany, Italy. This is not simply a concern for those left behind in the emptying rural communities, says Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, director at the OECD's Centre for Regions and Cities. Depopulation threatens Europe's cultural heritage, local languages, cuisines, crafts, farmland, traditions and even national security. Maintaining the municipalities in Garfagnana 'protects the cities below' from flooding, adds Mariani. Lamia Kamal-Chaoui of the OECD says maintaining municipalities in areas like Garfagnana 'protects the cities below' from flooding". Photograph: Hatim Kaghat via AFP It carries a wider cost to society, generating 'a geography of discontent, which in turn creates political discontent, social discontent, putting our democracy in danger', says Kamal-Chaoui. Attempts at reversing the trend range from selling houses for €1 to encourage new arrivals to restore them, to subsidising vital services and repurposing civic buildings so they can serve several different functions. Some areas are turning to tourism, encouraging second-home ownership even as some other areas turn against it. The OECD urges rural areas to 'shrink smartly'. This includes consolidating services, boosting connectivity and using technology to improve access to healthcare and education. It encourages rural areas to talk up the opportunities and the quality of life in rural communities. The aim is that this will help shift the narrative away from the challenges. But the underlying issues in remote rural areas – ageing populations, falling birth rates and a paucity of employment opportunities – will be harder to address. Molezuelas mayor, Alexandre Satue Lobo, says he is trying to maintain local services as best he can, but regards reversing population decline as an impossible task. 'You have to manage it,' he says. 'But I don't see how the village can go back to being what it once was.' Drift As with many other rural areas, the gradual decline of Molezuelas began with a drift of residents towards industrialising urban areas, such as the Spanish port city of Bilbao or even France. The rise of the knowledge economy since the 1960s has made urban centres more important, while many of the traditional industries that were the backbone of rural communities have declined. In eastern Europe, decades of centralised industrialisation under Soviet influence helped push rural populations towards urban centres. As a result, protracted emigration and low birth rates are contributing to double-digit rural population losses in Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania. Families are having fewer children across most of the developed world. There were only 3.6 million births in the EU in 2024, according to Eurostat, the lowest on record and well below the years up to the mid-1970s, when births routinely topped 6 million annually. 'Our actual biggest concern, at the moment, is a lack of children,' says Markus Hirvonen, mayor of North Karelia in Finland's easternmost region. Many of its 13 municipalities have shrunk to a third or less of the population they had in the 1960s. In the cluster of villages that make up Juuka, only nine babies were born last year while 150 people died, Hirvonen says. 'Nowadays there are a lot of very empty villages,' he adds. As a result of these trends, the EU's rural population is forecast to shrink by 18 per cent by 2100, with some areas – including in Bulgaria, Croatia, Portugal and Lithuania – expected to lose one-third of their rural inhabitants or more. In parts of rural Finland near the Russian border, declining population density is viewed as a strategic risk. 'We absolutely don't want these areas to die,' says Hirvonen, adding that its geographical location means it is 'very important' to maintain 'living villages and small municipalities, and people who are committed to this area'. For young people in rural areas, one of the draws of urban centres is universities. This will be the case for the 17-year-old daughter of Danilo Musetti, who runs a holiday home and rental bike centre in Garfagnana. Depopulation 'will be much more dramatic with the new generations as they look for job opportunities elsewhere', he predicts. In Molezuelas, which has emptied out faster than anywhere else in Zamora, the signs of decline are everywhere. The local school closed in 1969. The village football pitch is a jungle of shoulder-high grass. As its population declined, services fell away. The health centre, which only opens one day a week, on a Wednesday, is now at risk of closure. The commune's sole business today is a bar and the nearest big supermarket is 40km away. Elderly residents rely on travelling vendors to bring them bread, milk, fruit and vegetables, but they are getting old too. 'We were very well served until recently, but then they started retiring,' says María del Pilar Martínez as she buys a baguette from baker Margarita Casado's van. 'It will be this señora's turn soon.' Mayor Satue Lobo, the son of a Spanish emigrant father and a French mother, says he is left clutching at straws. Tax revenues are dwindling, and he is even struggling to get a communal recycling container from the provincial government. 'I spend a lot of time reading documents about the subsidies we might be able to access,' he says. Tax breaks Most European countries have initiatives in place to revive or stem the decline of rural areas. Spain's €13 billion demographic plan contains 130 measures, including regional tax breaks and housing incentives for the countryside. Italy has a long-running strategy for 'inner areas', the UK has its 'shared prosperity fund' and there are so-called settlement officers in the Scottish Highlands in charge of helping people to move or stay in the area. In Garfagnana, the lush mountainous region between Pisa and Florence, mayor Mariani uses her own wages to fund extra music and science and maths lessons in local schools, along with childcare before and after the school day, in a bid to attract families. The area also offers abandoned houses for €1 and subsidies to people moving from elsewhere. Derelict buildings have been restored to create affordable housing for the community. In partnership with the Tuscan regional government, local bars in remote hamlets have been repurposed as public service hubs, allowing residents to pay bills, access healthcare appointments and connect to the digital state. To save money, services such as business permits, public procurement and emergency alerts are now provided jointly across over a dozen municipalities in the area. 'The challenge is to improve services, so not so many families desire to leave,' says Mariani. She also wants to see more investment from the national government in transport and connectivity as well as reduced tax rates. Yet Garfagnana, classified as an intermediate region by Eurostat because it lies on the fringe of an industrial and urban province, has still lost 10.5 per cent of its population in the past decade. Many of its municipalities have seen their populations halve since the 1960s. A few hamlets are now completely abandoned. Most of the local authorities in the areas have lost any banking presence, with an over 20 per cent fall in clothing shops, bars and bakeries over the past decade across the valley. House prices are a quarter of those in the wider province, with a 13 per cent decline just in the past year. At the EU level, there is a €392 billion cohesion fund in the current budget for regional policy, but it is facing pressure to maintain or increase that number in the next budget starting from 2028. Last year, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta called on the EU to enforce the principle of the 'freedom to stay', to help many areas across Europe stop losing population and basic services, in a high-level report on the future of the single market. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has called on the EU to enforce the principle of the 'freedom to stay'. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/ AFP The issue was also raised in June by Denis Nesci, member of the European Parliament and rapporteur of a call to action, who wants the EU to implement targeted measures to 'reverse this trend' of young people fleeing their home towns. 'The ongoing exodus ... is progressively weakening these regions,' he said. This deprives them 'of the conditions needed for young people to remain in their places of origin'. But breaking the cycle of fewer people and more costly and downsized public services is increasingly challenging. In the Scottish Highlands, the demographic crisis being driven by 'the lack of sustainable employment, the lack of services provision, and the lack of affordable and available housing', according to Raymond Bremner, leader of Highland Council. The population of parts of the vast, mountainous region is projected to fall at double-digit rates by 2040. The council fights to provide 'access to those services as close to their community as possible,' says Bremner, including buying a bus company to provide affordable services to remote areas and mothballing schools rather than closing them completely. But, he adds, 'you've got to balance that with providing children a socially supported educational experience where they have the ability to play with their peers'. Depopulation In North Karelia, the campaign to arrest depopulation has begun in earnest. Remote learning is used in schools to cover specialist subjects. There are funds to attract businesses and investment to rural areas. A mobile healthcare system provides travelling nurses, dentists and doctors to an ageing population. Sports centres are free of charge to attract people from the cities where those services are expensive and baby bonuses are offered to young families. Empty schools have been sold to private owners, while others – often with only a few children on their roll – are kept running with some pupils brought in by taxi. 'I try to figure out every day what I can do more ... but it's very, very difficult,' says mayor Hirvonen, who expects depopulation to continue despite the efforts. Molezuelas has bet on its appeal as a holiday destination. A string of well-tended second homes has appeared, mostly owned by people from Bilbao or France who are related to those who left the village in the past. This points to the future mayor Bertín sees: a place with little-to-no permanent residents or amenities, but an annual infusion of life in the form of summer holidaymakers. There is increasing momentum to recast the narrative around rural areas to reverse their fortunes. Zamora's provincial government has launched the initiative Mi Pueblo Acoge , or 'My Village Welcomes', which aims to attract mostly Latin American immigrants to fill jobs in rural areas. Alongside the non-profit Talento 58 foundation, which is linked to the church, the initiative has helped resettle 124 families since 2022, including some Venezuelans who are qualified engineers, doctors and administrators. 'People call it 'emptied Spain'. I call it the Spain of opportunities,' says Jesús Alemán, the foundation's director, noting some newcomers have taken over local family businesses. A similar message is coming from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Christina Morrison, who works for a settlement office in Uist – a group of six islands that make up the Outer Hebridean Archipelago – is in favour of promoting a more positive vision 'so people could be actually interested in living in these places', she says. Her role is to help people relocate to the Outer Hebrides, or stay in the area where schools are shrinking and closing. While she is frank about the challenges – a lack of affordable housing, childcare and reliable transport – she says there is a longer list of reasons to live on the islands. Children walk around safely with a 'freedom that you wouldn't give to a child in the mainland' and then there is the joy of socialising in a supportive, tight-knit community. People might be busy with jobs, farming, gardening, volunteering or caring for more vulnerable people 'but there is no stress', adds Morrison. That is on top of the breathtaking natural beauty that the Outer Hebrides is known for. 'There's nowhere else in the world to be when the sun is shining.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
RNZ News
06-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Berry grower Bob Teal - finding a niche and bearing fruit
rural farming 29 minutes ago Bob Teale's inventiveness has allowed him to keep growing a niche range of berries into his 80s. Old push chairs for harvesters and a handy little electric golf cart helps him run up and down the rows.
The Guardian
31-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
Crossing the city-country divide: how do Australian farmers advocate for their industry in an urbanised world?
The view from my front lawn is paddocks and trees. From here, almost all I see is farmland and native bushland. A couple of years ago, I stood in this spot with a good friend, an immigrant from the UK. A smart, interested and interesting friend, and also a vegetarian. Which wouldn't be relevant except I'm a beef farmer, so for our friendship to prosper, this particular difference of opinion needs to be accommodated. Jess asked me what we would grow on our farm if we weren't growing livestock. The question initially confused me. Were we looking at the same landscape? Could she not see the steep hills, the prolific rocks, the lack of water? Assuming you still needed or wanted to use this land to produce food (which I do), to my mind, it is grazing land. Anything else would be extremely challenging. Not only are rocks and hills awkward to navigate, and our lack of irrigation problematic, the terrain is in places frankly a nightmare for the machinery and equipment essential to cropping. I think of a contractor who informed us he would not be working our paddocks any longer after his spreader truck got not one or two, but four flat tyres. We typically apply fertiliser by air now. I explained this to Jess, and she listened with interest. Sign up to receive Guardian Australia's fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter That's stuck with me, because it reminded me how many people have strong views about agriculture. And so they should. Farmers manage more than half of Australia's landmass. We are arguably custodians of one of the country's greatest assets: its ability to feed and clothe its own people, and the wider world. But knowledge about and personal experience of agriculture is dwindling. Perceptions of agriculture from outside of the industry – particularly in the cities where most Australians live – are often negative. Stories showcasing great custodianship and care don't make the front page – it's only news when something goes wrong. This isn't unique to our industry. I know the old newsroom adage: 'If it bleeds, it leads.' The difference in agriculture is that our work is increasingly foreign to the very people who rely on our produce every day. It's the challenge of our industry, and one I've personally taken on: to advocate in an environment where the divide between rural and urban communities is greater than ever before. In 2021, 66.9% of Australia's population lived in its greater capital cities. Many have little or no connection to the people who grow the products they eat, wear or use every day. Research by CQUniversity makes this gap even clearer. In 2021 they surveyed more than 5,000 primary and secondary school students to evaluate their knowledge of agriculture. The results were, to my mind, alarming. They found secondary students who believe Australian cattle are raised exclusively in sheds. (To clarify, only 4% of Australia's beef herd is in a feedlot at any given time and are generally raised on pasture. Only 20% of Australia's milk production comes from intensive or housed dairy systems.) They also found primary school students who believe cotton is an animal product not a plant; and who believe chickens are routinely fed hormones (a practice banned more than 60 years ago). I believe the work of an advocate, unlike that of an activist or influencer, is to build connection and knowledge. To start with a desire to understand: what do you think of agriculture? What would you like to know? I ask these questions not because I expect to change your mind, but I hope to engage with you. I hope you might share with me, so I might better understand perceptions of agriculture. I don't believe the future of agricultural advocacy lies simply in an exchange of facts, though I wholeheartedly agree all conversations should be underpinned by credible research and evidence. But it's the stories from agriculture that I believe truly show the deeply complex industry of which I'm a part. That shows you the heart of it, and what it has to offer. Sometimes those stories are dark. Death, not often part of everyday urban life, is a normal part of agriculture, especially livestock farming. That can be confronting, even for farmers with decades of experience. But it's part of our life. When my eldest daughter was two, we had a terrible calving season, with cows struck down by a condition called grass tetany. It resulted in the death of many cows straight after birthing. One morning my daughter asked me to play with her. 'Be a cow, Mummy!' I obliged and tried to look suitably bovine. 'Moo, Mummy!' I mooed. 'Now lie down dead!' I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I probably did both. Stories can also share joy. I took a couple of orphan lambs we were hand-rearing into my daughter's childcare and gave a group of very excited three-year-olds the opportunity to interact with them. We bottle-fed the lambs and passed around handfuls of unprocessed wool, and some yarn, to compare textures and smell. The kids delighted in the experience, and our much-loved lambs fought over the milk bottle. All went well, with some added entertainment from my daughter casually taking a swig from the lambs' milk bottle. Raising livestock is complex. Together with my husband, we're dedicated to raising our children to appreciate the joy of caring for animals and providing them with an environment to thrive, alongside the understanding that we are growing animals for food and fibre. Farmers often say city people don't understand agriculture. But the gap goes both ways. Most farmers I know own the land they work. It's easy to forget what it's like to bid for a rental, move every 12 months, or raise kids in high-rise apartments with no green space. We complain about potholes and distances between towns, but we're not stuck on highways for hours each day, or wrangling toddlers and groceries on public transport. Bridging that divide isn't about proving who has it tougher. It's about recognising the difference and respecting what each life involves. I love the saying: 'No one in the history of calming down has ever calmed down because they were told to calm down.' I don't see a future for agricultural advocacy in telling people stuff. I see a future in listening and in sharing, openly. Does my friend Jess want me to grow plants, not animals, for food on our property? Maybe. Just because we have the same information doesn't mean we're going to have the same opinion. But I think she also understands why we grow beef. And while she won't be having steak on the barbecue with us any time soon, I'm grateful she gave me the chance to explain why we do what we do. Felicity Richards is the chairperson of Farmsafe Australia and the Tasmanian Biosecurity Advisory Committee. She runs a beef grazing operation in northern Tasmania with her husband, Mark. You can contact her here. Sign up for the Rural Network email newsletter
Washington Post
16-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
A Texas suburb that saw its population jump by a third is the fastest-growing city in the US
DALLAS — The fastest-growing city in the U.S. last year was a Dallas suburb that saw its population jump by nearly a third. The number of residents in Princeton, located about 46 miles (74 kilometers) north of Dallas, increased from about 28,000 to 37,000 from 2023 to 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday. The growth has come so quickly that the city — which more than doubled its population since 2020 — has struggled to build roads and infrastructure fast enough as it transforms from a farming community.
ABC News
14-05-2025
- ABC News
Subdivision plans near Wharton Beach raise questions from farming community
A farming community in Western Australia's remote south-east has questioned plans for a 300-block subdivision near one of the country's most pristine beaches. Perth-based developer John Bestall wants to create a "holiday village-style" precinct on his 607-hectare property, 770 kilometres south-east of Perth and 60km east of Esperance. His plans, submitted to the Shire of Esperance, propose 1-8ha lots that would suit rural residential living or tourist accommodation, given the famous Wharton Beach and Duke of Orleans Bay are a five-minute drive down the road. He also believes the project would support the future development of a new town site in the area. The Orleans Bay Road property currently contains a tree plantation that would be harvested prior to development. Esperance's current local planning strategy already supports a future town site at Wharton Beach, opposite the existing caravan park. The area is a popular tourist destination with visitors regularly driving from Esperance to fish, camp, surf and see the famous white sand beaches. But the region is remote and has little infrastructure apart from the caravan park and services at Condingup, 25km to the north. With his land currently zoned as rural, Mr Bestall has asked for support to change the classification to allow for additional tourism, conservation and residential use. It also proposes creating "conservation covenants" and leaving 144 hectares as a large rural lot to protect native vegetation. In Condingup, a hub and meeting point for the local farming community, the project has sparked plenty of discussion. Marie Fowler, who farms in the area, believes long-time farmers wanting to retire locally would like the idea, while others would worry about its impact on the existing town. "There's not an option [elsewhere] really to have that lifestyle block, a five-acre block or something a bit bigger," she said. "So I think there is interest from that point of view. But she said there was concern the new precinct may overwhelm Condingup as it could be more than three times its size. She was interested to learn more as the process moved forward. Peter Brown, a retiree who lives at the nearby caravan park, worried the development would put too much pressure on the area and lead to reduced accessibility to the coast. "The Wharton town site, that's been spoken about ever since I can remember. Nothing ever happened with it," he said. "Personally, I don't think it needs to be there." While he said the region desperately needed housing, he believed it should be closer to Esperance or Condingup. "From my perspective I hope it doesn't go ahead," he said. "But … that's maybe just being selfish." Esperance Shire chief executive Shane Burge said if the subdivision was to happen, the developer would be responsible for putting in public amenities such as roads and green spaces. He said the shire would take on responsibility once it was finished, funded through rates paid by new property owners. He said the area would likely also need its own water supply scheme. But he said the idea was still a long way off. "There is [community] concern," he said. "We'll make sure if the planning commission do support it that it's widely put out there [for public feedback]."
